40 or 80 wire new IBM drive on old motherboard

[Al Franz]

I have an older ABIT LX6 motherboard which only supported 33 speed IDE hard
drives. Currently I just added another hard drive on my system so now I
have an IBM Deskstar 8.4 GIG and IBM Deskstar 75 GIG (max speed 100) drive
on the same ribbon cable. I am using the ribbon cable that I believe came
with the 8.4 GIG drive. I have read notes about using an 80 wire cable with
these new drives but if I am on an older motherboard/chip set that does not
support these other drives is there any advantage to doing so. Also at a
later date I would move this new drive to a different system with an 80 wire
cable and ATA100 speed would I loose my data? Or does that not make a
difference?

Thanks!

[Ed Light]

"Al Franz" <alb...@netmation.com>

> I have an older ABIT LX6 motherboard which only supported 33 speed IDE

...
> I just added another hard drive on my system (max speed 100) ...

> on the same ribbon cable.

...

>at a
> later date I would move this new drive to a different system with an 80
wire
> cable and ATA100 speed would I loose my data?

No. The cable simply connects the drive up. If it can go faster than 33 it
will only if the cable has 80 wires.

I've seen a drive manual that said it has to have an 80 wire cable. Best
thing to do is download the drive's manual from the manufacturer's web site.
It will probably be a big .pdf file with installation and specs at the top
and stuff for engineers after that.

--
Ed Light
Remove .nospam to reply
m...@mk.nospam.net

[Mark Stapley]

Eekk.... major cross post! Oh well....

New motherboards are quite cheap, and PCI ATA66 and ATA100 IDE controller
cards are even cheaper. There are some known issues with some controllers
and IBM drives, so if you do upgrade make sure you upgrade to the latest
motherboard bios, or latest controller card bios when you make your
purchase. Personally I would get the newer 80 wire cables, as it won't hurt.
More convenient round IDE cables are now readily available in the UK, are
rated for use up to ATA100, and are cheap. Around £5.50 each from
http://www.scan.co.uk for example. Some old IDE ribbon cables are of
terrible quality. When/if you decide to upgrade you will then be all set.

--

Join the Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project
Put your wasted clock-cycles to good use
http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/